Bumblebee at Super Hero High (DC Super Hero Girls)

by Lisa Yee

Bumblebee tried not to shed a tear. That would be silly, right? Everyone was safe. That was what truly mattered. Still, she had a hard time reconciling herself to the fact that her lab was gone—and that meant so were her projects.

  * * *

  “My parents are staying with my cousin Keisha’s family while the house is rebuilt,” Bumblebee explained. She was back in her room at school, surrounded by friends: Poison Ivy, Big Barda, and Batgirl. Wonder Woman and Supergirl dropped in to offer condolences. And Harley volunteered to do an exclusive video as a fundraising effort for the family.

  “Thanks,” Bumblebee said, holding up her hand to block Harley’s video camera. “But this is nothing compared to true natural disasters happening all over the world.”

  “It’s amazing no one got seriously hurt,” said Batgirl as she took off her purple hoodie and shook out her auburn hair. “What will you do next?”

  “Next…for what?” Bumblebee asked. She wondered how long it would take for her dad’s broken arm to heal so he could start taking photos again.

  “Your tech lab. All your stuff. Your experiments,” Batgirl reminded her.

  Bumblebee fell onto her bed and hugged her pillow. “Urgggggh!” she cried. “My lab!”

  “Tea time!” announced Katana as she did a shoulder roll into the room, landed upright, and set down a tray.

  “Thanks!” Bumblebee savored a sip of the warm ginger tea. She was glad Katana had added extra extra honey, just the way she liked it. “I guess I’ll have to put everything on hold for a while. It’s too bad; I was developing a new battery pack, one with a much longer life. I’ve been having problems with my current one. I think it’s just too old. I’m lucky it’s lasted this long.”

  The teen super heroes sat still in the classroom as a dark storm descended upon them. What looked like sizzling bolts of fire ricocheted off the walls, bounced off the ceiling, and slammed into the floor, only to rebound and strike the oversized computer screens that flanked the back of the room. The thunder was so loud it created shock waves that caused the building to shake off its foundation.

  Beast Boy tried to cover his ears with his hands, which was difficult because he had morphed into an elephant. Cheetah closed her eyes against the lightning. Miss Martian disappeared.

  “Don’t move, don’t move,” the teacher ordered. Bumblebee didn’t even blink. “And ready…NOW!” shouted Mr. Fox.

  With that command, the Supers sprang into action. The Flash ran around the Weaponomics room in an attempt to deflect the bolts Lightning kept throwing, while her sister, Thunder, amped up the loud crackling noises as her brown eyes twinkled with delight. Lightning adjusted the yellow headband that kept her short brown hair in place, and Thunder stomped her bright yellow boots, making the noise reverberate even more. It wasn’t often that the sisters were asked to use the full force of their powers in the classroom. They were having a blast!

  Star Sapphire flipped her long, dark hair over her shoulder, then aimed the lavender glow of her power ring at Thunder to distract her. Bumblebee used the sonic bee stings from her wrist-mounted blasters to diffuse the sound waves of the thunder. Wonder Woman used the Lasso of Truth to ground several lightning bolts at once, while Supergirl shot her heat vision at the sizzling bolt that was hurled at her. The force of the two forces smashing against each other caused an explosion that blew out the classroom windows.

  Harley Quinn was thrilled. “WOWZA and BAM!” she shouted. She had gotten it all on camera. It was the perfect scene for her “Super School Strikes Again” segment on her web channel.

  “Okay, stop, stop, just stop!” Mr. Fox said wearily. He had seen it all before. Today, the teacher was wearing his orange vest and gray sports jacket. “Everyone, take your seats. Thunder, Lightning, thank you. You two were great. The rest of you, not so much.”

  Peering into the room from the hallway, Parasite, the janitor, grumbled. He knew who’d be cleaning up the mess.

  Inside, The Flash looked down at his feet. Beast Boy turned into a mouse. Bumblebee took her seat and leaned forward, ready to hear what the teacher had to say.

  “Today’s class was about weather manipulation and how we can circumvent potential natural disasters,” Lucius Fox told them. “Do you know what the number one thing most of you did wrong was?”

  Harley was waving her hand high in the air. “Ask me! Ask me!”

  Mr. Fox peered over his glasses. “Ms. Quinn, what was the number one thing most of you did wrong?”

  Harley tugged on one of her ponytails. “One thing?” she said with a broad smile. “WOWZA, there are soooo many choices. Who can choose just one?”

  As Harley began counting on her fingers and listing things like “shoulda worn my new galoshes,” “shoulda checked the weather,” and “shoulda eaten more snacks for energy,” the teacher shook his head. “Anyone else?” he asked.

  Bumblebee thought for a moment, then nodded ever so slightly.

  “Yes, Bumblebee?” Mr. Fox said.

  “You gave us time to think about what was happening,” she began, “but when we got the signal to go, we all just dove right in.”

  The teacher pointed at Bumblebee. “She’s on to something,” he said excitedly. “Who else?”

  Wonder Woman raised her hand. “We had time to talk to each other, to formulate a plan. But instead, we all just acted on our own.”

  Katana was next. “And we are stronger as a team than as individuals.”

  “Now you’re getting it,” Mr. Fox said, nodding. “Yes, Harley?”

  “We shoulda worked together!” she said, proud of herself for having just thought of it. As the room broke into laughter, Harley looked around. “What’s so funny? Did I miss something?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Bumblebee assured her as the bell for the next class rang.

  * * *

  Red Tornado was an imposing figure. A massive red robot, he was an expert when it came to flight training and took it very seriously, as did most of his students. The only time anyone had seen him flustered was when Queen Hippolyta, Wonder Woman’s mom, had shown up at school one day and said hello to him.

  Bumblebee checked her wings. Light and aerodynamic, they were surprisingly strong. She had been practicing free-falling, then swooping upward just inches before she hit the ground, allowing the power boost from her super suit to propel her higher.

  Beast Boy had turned into a pterodactyl, a prehistoric flying reptile with an impressive wingspan and a menacing beak. As he flapped his wings, the drawings Katana had been making of her classmates scattered. “Hey, watch where you’re flying!” she said.

  Non-flyers were also required to take flight training. As Red Tornado put it, “There are times when you will need to know how your opponent operates in flight. That way, you can use your own unique powers to counteract their advantage.”

  Miss Martian hurried over to help Katana gather her papers. Beast Boy had turned into an octopus and was using all eight arms to gather the drawings. “Sorry! Sorry!” he kept saying. But the papers kept ripping when anyone tried to pull them free from his suckers, which just made things worse.

  “Beast Boy!” Katana cried, startling him. “Ooooh, no,” she said when she saw what had just happened.

  “Oh, wow,” Beast Boy octopus said apologetically. “But you know what happens when an octopus startles, right?”

  Miss Martian said softly, “It squirts ink.”

  Katana’s drawings were ruined.

  As Beast Boy begged for Katana’s forgiveness, Bumblebee tried not to laugh. It was never dull at Super Hero High.

  “Attention, class!” Red Tornado bellowed. “Stop goofing off. We have work to do.”

  Instantly, the Supers were standing in a straight row, arms behind their backs, listening to their teacher. Even Beast Boy.

  “Today we are going to tackle natural
disasters,” Red Tornado said, beaming a list onto the wall. “That means learning how to navigate through all kinds of unfriendly conditions, including hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl, you’re up. Class, watch and learn. We’re going to start by creating an avalanche.”

  He nodded at Frost. She raised her hands over her head and began to make a mountain of snow and ice that got bigger and bigger and bigger….

  “Well, that was a disaster,” Hawkgirl was saying as she adjusted her Nth Metal belt and flapped her wings to remove the excess ice.

  “And there was nothing natural about it,” quipped Harley.

  “I thought it was sort of fun,” said Wonder Woman, brushing the snow off her golden shield.

  “I did my part and created the snow and ice,” Frost said defensively. Her cool blue hair was pulled up into a ponytail on top of her head, making it look like a cascade of sleek, shiny ice was falling down her back. “It’s not my fault that you two couldn’t get the avalanche to go in the right direction.”

  Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl glanced at each other.

  “Well,” Poison Ivy said, wanting to head off an argument between her friends, “the good news is that before it did permanent damage to the school grounds, El Diablo was able to melt the snow, and then Supergirl created irrigation ditches so that the runoff could water the cornfield I’m growing.”

  “It made for great video,” Harley added. “Especially when it looked like the school was about to get buried in snow.”

  “You posted that already?” asked Bumblebee. Harley never ceased to amaze her. A lot of kids at Super Hero High were like that—doing the seemingly impossible. But then, what did you expect from a school of the best of the best? Sometimes she couldn’t even believe she went to Super Hero High.

  “Posted it the sec I got out of class,” boasted Harley. She did a vault over Hawkgirl’s chair, followed by a cartwheel, and landed on top of her desk with her hands raised in the air. No one blinked. They were used to it.

  The woman in the front of the room with the blond hair and a bell on her sweater shook her head. “Harley Quinn,” their teacher, Liberty Belle, cautioned, “we’ve talked about this before. Save your gymnastics for Coach Wildcat’s P.E. class. In Super Hero History, you’ll learn best by sitting down and looking up front.”

  Batgirl turned on her new Scribble Scrawler, a mini-computer she had designed that translated handwriting into type and then automatically organized it, adding footnotes and citations. Big Barda gripped a pen. She had a dozen more at the ready, since she tended to press too hard when she wrote and often broke them. Poison Ivy whispered to the Candytuft flowers in her backpack.

  “Ivy,” Liberty Belle said gently. “No talking to your plants in class.”

  Poison Ivy sat up, her face turning the color of her red hair. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I’m training my Candytuft flowers to listen and play back what they hear.”

  Liberty Belle nodded. “In that case, fine,” she said, then turned to the class. “I know you’ve been studying natural disasters with your other teachers,” she began. “So I’ve decided to continue this trend by going over some of the more famous incidents in history. Who can name a catastrophic natural disaster?”

  Lots of hands were raised. There were the usual—Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Hawkgirl. Liberty Belle scanned the room. “Big Barda,” she said brightly. “Let’s hear from you.”

  Barda looked around. Frost and Cheetah were whispering to each other and giggling. “On my home planet, Apokolips, there was a huge earthquake,” Barda began. She shut her eyes, remembering it. “The ground shook so hard that everyone was tossed around, slamming into walls, toppling off bridges. I was little when it happened, but I can still remember the devastation. Buildings fell and whole towns were destroyed, and they were never rebuilt even though Darkseid, our ruler, promised they would be.”

  When she opened her eyes, everyone was staring at her. Barda pressed her lips together and said softly, “Um…earthquakes are a type of natural disaster.”

  “So are villains who pretend to be super heroes,” someone who sounded suspiciously like Frost said loud enough to be heard by some, but soft enough for the teacher not to notice.

  “Big Barda is a true super hero,” Supergirl said, shushing Frost.

  “And she has fought bravely in battle,” Wonder Woman added.

  “I challenge anyone to prove otherwise!” Supergirl exclaimed.

  Liberty Belle cleared her throat loudly. The room went silent. The teacher said, “Thank you for sharing a firsthand experience, Barda. That must have been very hard to do. I appreciate it.”

  Big Barda nodded and looked at Supergirl, who gave her a warm smile. Everyone knew that Barda had once tried to overthrow Super Hero High, but it seemed like a long time ago. Since then, she had changed her ways, and she was now one of the school’s most loyal students.

  Barda smiled back at Supergirl as their teacher continued.

  “Now, class, we are going to learn about Earth’s natural disasters, then discuss what we could have done to help, had we been there. Let’s start with the Lake Nyos limnic eruption. Does anyone know what that was? Yes, Batgirl?”

  “Limnic eruptions are rare, and this one occurred in a lake in the Cameroonian jungle,” Batgirl began. “A magma chamber leaked carbon dioxide into the water, changing it to carbonic acid and causing the lake to erupt.”

  “Excellent research!” Liberty Belle exclaimed. “Now, who can tell us how we could have prevented this?”

  Raven raised her hand. Her ruby-red lipstick matched the red gem on her forehead. Bumblebee admired her short, dark hair with red tips. She had thought about cutting her hair that short, or even getting a buzz cut, but in the end decided she liked her long, wavy hair. “It couldn’t have been prevented,” Raven said. “I’ve been to places like that, and it would be nearly impossible to monitor them all.”

  “We could try, couldn’t we?” asked Miss Martian meekly.

  “That would be difficult,” Liberty Belle said as Miss Martian began to fade from sight. “Though it’s a great idea. However, on Earth, there are around 117 million lakes.”

  “So what do we do?” Bumblebee asked. One hundred and seventeen million was a lot.

  “I was just about to ask all of you that very same question,” said Liberty Belle. “You will pair up alphabetically. Each team will have twenty minutes to come up with a solution. Batgirl and Barda, you’re a team. Beast Boy, you’re with Bumblebee. Cheetah and Cyborg—”

  Bumblebee would have rather been partnered with Poison Ivy, or Batgirl, or anyone but Beast Boy. He was so annoying! Now, as she glanced at him, he morphed into a frog, then a rabbit, and then a skunk.

  “Can you please just settle on one animal—except the skunk—so we can focus on our assignment?” Bumblebee asked him. She prided herself on getting things done quickly and efficiently. That was probably why Principal Waller had handpicked Bumblebee as one of her office aides.

  “Aw, okay. Fine,” Beast Boy said, settling on being himself.

  “Thank you,” said Bumblebee. “Now, let’s start with the givens.”

  “The Givens?” Beast Boy asked. “Who are they?”

  Bumblebee wasn’t sure if he was serious or teasing her. “ ‘The givens’ means the facts,” she explained.

  Her partner burst out laughing. “I knew that,” he said, nudging her and rolling his eyes. “Duh!”

  Bumblebee tried not to fume. As the twenty minutes rushed by, Beast Boy seemed to have a joke for whatever she said. “Don’t you take anything seriously?” she asked.

  He grinned and raised both hands in the air as if to surrender. But before he could reply, Liberty Belle called out, “Time’s up! Beast Boy, you’re raising your hands. Does that mean you and Bumblebee would like to go first?”r />
  “We would be happy to go first!” Beast Boy said as he ran to the front of the room. “Isn’t that right, partner?”

  Bumblebee sat rooted to her chair with her arms crossed. For a brief second, she had allowed her mind to wander back to the fact that her house had been destroyed. Since she had seen the ruins, Bumblebee couldn’t stop thinking about it. But school assignments, homework, and being a part-time assistant to Principal Waller kept her busy—not to mention that here she was, in class with Beast Boy as a partner. He had contributed zero ideas to the project! If anything, he was a total distraction. And now he was volunteering them to go first?

  “What’s the matter?” Beast Boy asked, unaware that she was fuming again. “C’mon, you slowpoke!”

  Liberty Belle said encouragingly, “I’m looking forward to hearing what you have come up with.”

  “Sure thing!” Beast Boy said as Bumblebee dragged herself to the front of the room. Beast Boy smiled at his partner. “Go on, tell them our brilliant plan, Bumblebee!” When she glared at him, he leaned in and whispered, “Make it good. I need to bring my grade up in this class!”

  “It would be nearly impossible to monitor all 117 million lakes,” Bumblebee began through gritted teeth.

  “Impossible!” shouted Beast Boy.

  Ignoring him, she went on, “The best thing we can do is to have a rescue plan in place….”

  “Rescue plan!” he began chanting. “Rescue plan! Rescue plan!”

  Bumblebee refused to even look at Beast Boy. “With a rescue plan,” she continued, “everyone knows what their job is, and that way we can respond immediately at the first sign of a limnic eruption.”

  “Limnic! Limnic! Limnic!” Beast Boy broke into a little dance.

  As she went on, Beast Boy kept nodding and repeating random words she had just said. When Bumblebee was done, he led the room in applause. “And that’s what we came up with,” he said, taking a bow. “The two of us. Both. Her and me. Me and she. Him and her, and her and him—”